Jessica Carlisle is a runner. Being a runner is her identity to herself; she is talented, hard working and successful and when we meet her she has just set a personal record in the four hundred meters at a track meet. On the way home from the meet, Jessica's team bus is involved in an accident after being hit by another vehicle on the road. One of her team-mates is killed in the wreck, and Jessica is so badly injured that one of her legs has to be amputated.
According to Jessica's doctor, everything is in her favor when it comes to healing. She is young, fit and athletic. She is physically a good candidate for a full recovery. Emotionally and mentally, though, Jessica is not recovering at all. Running is her life, her passion, her everything. Now that she is not able to run anymore, she is deeply traumatized and spirals into depression. She doesn't like herself much anymore and is struggling with learning her new identity.
Jessica battles an addiction to painkillers, and also struggles with accepting her new limited mobility. She is also resentful of friends and family; a part of her knows that she should be grateful for their love, their loyalty, their patience, but she cannot express this gratitude, or even feel it properly, because she is so angry with the world, and understandably bitter that her team-mates are still able to run and compete, but she is the one who is not.
Back at school, Jessica starts to adapt to her new life. She is able to navigate the campus pretty well, in part because her best friend Fiona never leaves her side. However, people's attitude towards her in general has changed. They cannot help but see her disability, but they don't know what to say, and consequently they are awkward around her. Others ignore her disability completely, pretending they cannot see it, making it the elephant in the room that is almost as awkward as constantly staring. The only people at school who want to include her like they always did is the track team.
When she is not at school, Jessica devotes her time to therapy, and to getting her prosthetic leg. At least she will be able to find some sense of normalcy when her disability is not so obvious to other people.
Coach Kyro rallies the track team to hold fundraisers to pay for Jessica's prosthetic leg. She is overwhelmed by his generosity and caring. Jessica also begins to make new friends. Rosa Brazzi is a girl in her math class who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her body is weak, and she is confined to a wheelchair, but her mind is as sharp as a razor, and she invites Jessica to sit with her at the back of the classroom, helping her to improve her math grade. The friendship begins to change the way Jessica looks at life. She is given a temporary prosthetic leg and begins to learn to walk on it. She also becomes quite well-known around the community; her story is covered by a local television channel, and a boy she has a crush on, Gavin Vance, writes an article for the newspaper about some of the fundraisers for her prosthetic leg. An anonymous donor matches the money that her track team have raised; there is enough money to purchase the prosthetic. A surprise party is organized for Jessica and the prosthetic is presented to her. She begins to feel as though her dreams of running can come true after all.
After practice, Jessica quickly learns to walk on her new prosthetic, and then begins to run on it as well. She finds that she has never lost her passion - quite the opposite. She even starts to think of ways in which she can pay forward her re-discovered abilities to run and compete. She is determined to maintain her friendship with Rosa, and support her in the same way that Rosa has supported her. Their unlikely friendship is now a constant source of strength and enjoyment in her life. She decides that she and Rosa will run in the ten mile long River Run together; she will run, and she will push Rosa all the way in her wheelchair. That way, she can teach Rosa how to love "running" in the same way that Rosa taught her to love math. As well as cementing their friendship, Jessica believes that it will draw attention to people with disabilities, and encourage people to see them as more than their disability.
Jessica trains hard for the race and accomplishes her goal; she and Rosa finish, and she realizes Rosa was right when she told her that the finish line and the start line are exactly the same; where one adventure ends, another waits to get started.
